Policy Alternatives for Post-Industrial America Suggested in the "Bell Curve": The Untold Story.

Bauer, Norman J.

The primary problem that Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray address in their book, "The Bell Curve," is that an unrecognized societal migration has been emerging in American society since 1950. People with high IQs are rewarded socially and economically, while the rest of the population has remained stagnant. This paper describes Herrnstein's and Murray's assumptions about human intelligence, which are derived from the classical tradition. The paper argues that the enormous controversy generated by their theories about ethnic differences in cognitive ability; ethnic inequalities in relation to IQ; the demography of intelligence; and social behavior and the prevalence of low cognitive ability, has obscured the implications for social issues and policies. The lesson of "The Bell Curve," this paper argues, is that there are substantial numbers of people with limited cognitive ability who exhibit the behaviors and problems that dominate the nation's social policy agenda. The paper asks how the United States should shape its policies to deal with the twin realities that: (1) people differ in intelligence for reasons that are not their fault, and (2) increasingly and inexorably, intelligence is becoming the major factor that will have a long-term effect on how well people do in this post-industrial, high-tech culture. Because of the advent of advanced, highly complex technologies, and because of the ways in which these technologies tend to have a debilitating effect on the opportunities for many people with less cognitive ability to construct a good life for themselves, Americans must give serious consideration to the consequences for society. (Contains five references.) (LMI)